Guest Blogging Spam

There is a different kind of spam circulating the net ending up in in-boxes. It’s called guest blogging spam.

The other day I received an interesting email from Suzanne Ault who claims to be a reader of this very blog.

She said in her email that my blog was one of her favorite reads on the web. Automatically red flags went up as the email felt very impersonal. I also don’t recall anyone by that name ever commenting on my blog.
If my blog was one of her favorites, then you’d think at some point she would have commented on something I wrote. (Maybe she’s just a lurker, though I highly doubt it.)

She wanted to offer me a guest article related to the most common questions related to diabetes and a sample recipe. Suzanne Ault is the author of a diabetic recipe blog.

Now I’m all for educating the public about diabetes. After all, my Mother died from the terrible disease. I might have been inclined to take Susan up on her offer had she not lied in her email about being a regular reader of my blog. (The email was perhaps auto generated.)

A Google search turned up several blogs, of bloggers who also received the email from Suzanne.

This reminds me of the generated link exchange requests I have received over the years.

Apparently guest blogging spam is becoming more common. Ann Smarty has a detailed post about this on her blog myblogguest.com,where she discusses the signs of guest post spam.

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15 thoughts on “Guest Blogging Spam”

I haven’t received these emails yet, but do get the link exchange ones periodically. I have gotten some strange spam lately. Both were exact duplicates of actual comments (one was one I had left) I had received, but from completely unknown people. I would have flagged them if they hadn’t been already.
.-= Anne Bender´s last blog..All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. =-.

Not just in your niche, but our niche as well. At least a few times per week we receive a guest blogging request from someone who “really enjoys” our blog. Well, there really isn’t much to enjoy in a real estate blog unless you are into property listings, community info, and the occasional funny video thrown in for good measure.

Having said that, I remain open minded. That’s until I receive their guest blog and do an exact phrase search on one of their sentences only to find the article on a half dozen other blogs. :-I
.-= Colleen´s last blog..Full Disclosure =-.

It’s truly annoying as most of this spam is coming from the unschooled who have yet to realize the the devaluation of duplicate content and the algorithms used in search engines pretty much kill any chance at benefit sneaking their links onto legit sites once had.

Worse is that many of them just can’t resist using auto generators.

You guys have it right. Anytime you recieve a contact that asks ANYTHING of you, research it before even thinking about considering it.
.-= Paul Novak´s last blog..Bear With Me =-.

I suppose my blog was spam guest blogged – in my case healthy Mediterranean recipes – and although the post was brief, and I had to amend it to give it weight, it inspired me to create superior recipes to the ones offered, and my recipes led to me being asked to guest chef for Parducci Wine Cellars. The spam guest blog offer also led you to leave a comment on my site, which brought me to your site. All in all, I am glad for all that came my way. Some people see lemons, others see an ingredient for salmon. Cheers!

I get a lot of these. I’ll sometimes see what they have out on the web already and I’ve been known to accept a guest post here and there. I had one guy who submitted something and I found out it was on another blog already, so I turned it down. But if I feel there’s something that fits things I like to talk about that’s original, why not.

I have yet to receive this type of request yet. But it is probably cause I am new to the game. It is good to know what to look out for though. Yes I would think she would have commented before or sent you an email.

It is pretty crazy how many spammers are out there. The worst part is that many bloggers, especially those starting out, may actually get really exited by this and think people are truly interested in their site and accept to exchange links.

I see you have written a few posts about spam I think its funny that you say “does anyone know of one that actually works”. Haha. Yea, none of them really work…I use Akismet and it is fairly decent, but these dam spammers are like ninjas. They will still make their way through even the best anti-spam plugins out there.

Luckily for me on my main website I do not have many pages where people can submit comments, but I just started a new site at simpleblogger.com where I opened it up to comment luv and keyword luv…this is going to be interesting. Actually, it will probably suck. But its kind of an experiment.

Anyway, as for the spam…not much we can do about it. But bloggers do have to become smarter, because clearly there is a lot of spam getting through if people are still doing it.
.-= AJ´s last blog..Rejuvenate WordPress Theme =-.

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About Me

Rose DesRochersis a wife, mother of 4, avid blogger, product reviewer at todays-woman.net, and writer. She currently lives in Ontario with her husband and youngest daughter . When she is not reviewing products or services, she can be found spending time with her family.